It's very well known that Americans Elect advisory board member and draft candidate David Walker is the former Comptroller General of the United States.
It also is very well known that Walker is a co-founder of the group No Labels.
Indeed, Walker himself — in the statement he released last Tuesday, through his Comeback America Initiative — explicitly named No Labels as one of the things in his schedule that leaves little room for a presidential run right now:
I am not a candidate and don’t expect to become one. Rather, I am focused on my many responsibilities, including serving...as a national co-founder of No Labels and as a member of A[mericans] E[lect]’s Board of Advisors.
And yet...
Had you visited NoLabels.org two days later — the same day that DraftWalker.com, the Web site of the Committee to Get Walker Running ("Draft Walker"), sprang to life — and had you scanned the "Our People" page, where for months Walker had been listed as a Co-Founder, you'd have come up empty. David Walker was nowhere to be found. Scrubbed.
Moreover...
When Draft Walker officially launched this past Monday, the committee did not mention Walker's role at No Labels (or, for that matter, his role at Americans Elect) in its press release — or in its bio of Walker — or in the editorial published the same day by committee co-chairs Yoni Gruskin and Ryan Schoenike.
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By yesterday, David Walker's listing at NoLabels.org had been restored — but with a difference.
On the "Our People" page at the No Labels site, persons in various categories — from "Co-Founders" to "Citizen Leaders" to "Back Office Staff" — are presented initially as part of either a "grid" or a "list," with their names, photos and thumbnail biographical sketches. Clicking on any specific person's name directs to a dedicated page for that person, and sometimes this includes a slightly longer bio.
Here's a screenshot from the cache of David Walker's dedicated page at NoLabels.org, as it appeared on April 5 — exactly two weeks before DraftWalker.com went from being a splash page to a full-fledged site (albeit a relatively simple one):
Click to enlarge.
At that time, as you can see, Walker's bio read:
Dave Walker has over 30-years of public, private and not-for-profit sector leadership experience. He has received three Presidential appointments with unanimous Senate confirmation from Presidents of both major parties, including his most recent as Comptroller General of the United States (1998-2008).
Here's a screenshot Walker's photo and thumbnail bio, as it currently appears in the grid version of the "Our People" page at NoLabels.org. The text of the bio is the same, in the list version:
Click to enlarge.
Now, as you can see, Walker's bio reads:
Dave Walker has over 30-years of public, private and not-for-profit sector leadership experience.
Notice two things about David Walker's "new" bio at NoLabels.org.
First: The references to Walker's "three presidential appointments with unanimous Senate confirmation from Presidents of both major parties" and to his decade as Comptroller General of the United States have been deleted.
Second: It no longer is possible, as it was before — and as it remains with every other Co-Founder and, indeed, with every Citizen Leader and back office staffer on the larger No Labels list of "Our People" — to click Walker's name and get a dedicated photo-and-bio page for him.
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What's up with all this shuffling and scissoring of David Walker's bio?
Why is Draft Walker cropping David Walker's No Labels and Americans Elect connections — if, in fact, that's what it's doing?
Why, in its bio of David Walker, did No Labels trim the reference to his presidential appointments, including the one — Comptroller General — that anchors his brand as a fiscal reform advocate?
Why is the biography of the tonsorially challenged Walker getting all these haircuts?
Perhaps even more to the point: Who is ordering them?
Recently, Walker talked to the Washington Post (emphasis mine):
[Americans Elect founder and lead investor Peter] Ackerman's enlistment of advisers is formidable....
And from those advisers may come Americans Elect’s face-saving option. In the past month, a small group of activists has emerged to recruit Dave Walker, an independent who once ran the Government Accountability Office, to run for president. Walker, who is on the Americans Elect board of advisers, said that he knew about the effort and that an Americans Elect employee had stepped down to lead the draft movement. Also in recent weeks, Americans Elect changed the requirements Walker needs to meet to win the nomination, revising the number of online supporters to 1,000 in 10 states instead of 5,000 in 10 states.
“This is an issue-oriented movement, and they’re trying to put a face to the movement,” Walker said in a phone interview. He said his mission has long been deficit reduction and the reorganization of the national debt. “For whatever reason, they believe I’m a person who symbolizes that. I guess they kind of view me as a means to an end.”
He remained, however, undecided: “My mama told me a long time ago you never say never.”
On Tuesday morning — the day after the Washington Post ran its piece on Monday — Walker released the following statement through his Comeback America Initiative (emphasis mine):
Reports in the media have mentioned an effort to draft me as a candidate for President through the Americans Elect (AE) process, and I want to clarify my position. I am aware of this recent independent movement to draft me, which is an initiative by people who evidently share my views regarding the need for fiscal, political and other major reforms to keep America great. Importantly, their effort is unrelated to the Comeback America Initiative (CAI), No Labels, and AE organizations.
While I appreciate and am humbled by their efforts, I am not a candidate and don't expect to become one. Rather, I am focused on my many responsibilities, including serving as CEO of the non-partisan CAI, as a national co-founder of No Labels, and as a member of AE's Board of Advisors.
And then, by nightfall on Tuesday — be warned that, if you don't already have whiplash, you may be about to get it — Walker was out with a tweet saying (emphasis mine):
I am not a candidate for public office but will seriously consider it if the Independent Draft Committee qualifies me for the AE ballot. DW
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Nobody does Americans Elect forensics better than Jim Cook at Irregular Times. And there's very little that I could say, about the connections and disconnections that Walker revealed with these three forays, that Cook didn't already say in his masterfully crisp untangling, on Tuesday evening — before word of Walker's tweeted re-reconsideration began making the rounds on Wednesday morning — of the web of relationships between Unity08, the 2008 Draft Bloomberg committee, Americans Elect, No Labels, Pete Peterson, David Walker and a 2012 Draft Walker committee.
But there is one — OK, a two-in-one — question that especially comes up for me right now, and I'd like to put this to David Walker...
Mr. Walker, you make reference to "the Independent Draft Committee" and to "this recent independent movement to draft me." You are able to say what "they believe" — and this evidently is a specific "they," since you also are able to speak with declarative confidence in asserting that "their effort is unrelated" to three specific organizations. You even — according to the Washington Post — "knew about the effort and that an Americans Elect employee had stepped down to lead" it.
So, I have to ask...
Exactly which "Independent Draft Committee" — and which former Americans Elect staffer — are you talking about?
(Please don't think me rude, everybody, but the rest of this is addressed to Mr. Walker. Do stick around, though.)
One might hope, I suppose, that someone who liked Americans Elect well enough to go work for it, and who then left the organization to draft someone else who actually was on the Board of Advisors of Americans Elect, would use AmericansElect.org to do the drafting.
Your profile at AmericansElect.org lists only one draft committee — the "'Let's get it done' draft committee for David Walker" — and two leaders of that committee: John Knubel and Richard Sulkovsky.
Is this "the Independent Draft Committee" — and is either John Knubel or Richard Sulkovsky the former employee of Americans Elect — that you're talking about? Or is this the committee — but the former staffer is behind the scenes and unnamed?
Or...
I notice that, among the Twitter accounts that re-tweeted your Tuesday night tweet were these two:
2 Draft David Walker — which is associated with the Web site DraftWalker.com
Interestingly, a Whois search reveals that Kleinsmith is listed as the registrar of the DraftWalker.com URL.
Yesterday morning, DraftWalker.com was nothing more than a splash page, with this logo
Screenshot of DraftWalker.org, 19 April 2012 a.m.
and this sign-up form.
Screenshot of DraftWalker.org, 19 April 2012 a.m. (click to enlarge)
I noticed that this page was "Paid for by the Committee to Get Walker Running," and that the contact email was [email protected]
This group seemed to have set up a YouTube channel on Tuesday, and posted its first two videos yesterday (albeit with no credit to "the Committee to Get Walker Running.")
And, by early yesterday afternoon, there was a full-blown Web site — for how long had this been queued up? — listing the committee co-chairs as Yoni Gruskin and Ryan Schoenike.
A news item on the site even goes so far as to characterize the Washington Post report — including your comments? — as a "preview" of the committee's efforts.
The committee still has the same name. And although the telephone number — 202-670-6365 — did, when I tried it, direct to a message from "the Committee to Get Walker Running," I couldn't help but notice the new contact email: [email protected]
Screenshot of DraftWalker.org, 19 April 2012 p.m. (click to enlarge)
So, is this "the Independent Draft Committee" — and is Yoni Gruskin, Ryan Schoenike or Solomon Kleinsmith the former Americans Elect staffer — you're talking about? Or is this the committee — but the former staffer is behind the scenes and unnamed? (On LinkedIn, only Kleinsmith, of the three, cites any formal connection to Americans Elect — but he lists himself only as a "Delegate Leader" of Americans Elect, and these are unpaid, i.e., free-labor, volunteer positions.)
Or...
Is there altogether some other committee that a former employee of Americans Elect "stepped down to lead"?
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Oh, and, while you're here — sorry, I know I promised to ask just a couple of questions, but I do have one more...
You were careful to point out, in the statement that you released on Tuesday morning, that you are "focused on [your] many responsibilities, including serving as...a national co-founder of No Labels" (video at 0:02).
Postscript: Jim Cook — whose tenacious and indispensable new analysis went up a couple of hours before this more generally scoped piece — drills beneath many of the surfaces I scratch here and comes up with much new information. Ultimately, though, David Walker needs to answer all of these questions himself.
The Big Hitch in Lawrence Lessig's Plan to "'Occupy' AmericansElect.org"
There is a moment, about two and a half minutes in to Buddy Roemer's appearance with Americans Elect advisory board member Lawrence Lessig last month, on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" (video), when Roemer very emphatically — in a way that makes it clear that this is the one message he wants the audience to remember — says:
"And the issue is reform — the issue is reform."
This dovetails very conveniently — perhaps a little too conveniently — with Lessig's own message in his compelling new pocket treatise, One Way Forward, in which Lessig calls for citizens to "'occupy' AmericansElect.org." Lessig discussed this with the historian and journalist Colin Woodard, for a piece that appeared a few weeks ago in the Washington Monthly.
Specifically, Lessig writes (emphases mine):
Become a delegate. Today. Make reform your number-one issue. Work to convince other AE delegates that this number-one issue for you should be the number-one issue for Americans Elect. And then cast your ballot only for a candidate who promises reform first.
Lay aside, for a moment, the fact that, in promoting — and, indeed, campaigning with — Buddy Roemer as the "reform" candidate for whom Americans Elect delegates should be casting,* while at the same time serving in an official capacity as member of the Board of Advisors of Americans Elect, Lessig is in violation of both the spirit and the letter of the corporation's strict policy on neutrality (Section 10 of the corporate Rules and Sections 4.12 and 6.1 of the By-Laws).
Lessig's plan calls for Americans Elect delegates to use AmericansElect.org as the mechanism through which to identify and organize as "reform" delegates, and then to vote for a "reform" candidate.
Could Lessig's Web-based plan actually work?
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NOT IF Americans Elect delegates would be relying on the Americans Elect Web site, to know what candidates mean by "reform."
Let's take another walk in the weeds, shall we?
Click in to any candidate profile at AmericansElect.org, and you'll see a list of nine "Priorities" — Economy, Education, Energy, Environment, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Immigration, Reform, and Social Issues — each with a numerical percentage that is meant to indicate the relative importance of that Priority to the candidate.
Screenshot from AmericansElect.org
Americans Elect uses this same list of nine Priorities to organize a much longer list of hundreds of multiple-choice questions — called the "True Colors" survey — that the corporation invites delegates to answer at AmericansElect.org (under "Colors"). Each question is identified as an Environment question, a Foreign Policy Question, a Reform question, and so on.
At the outset of this True Colors process, delegates are asked to "Rank Your Priorities," then are invited to answer nine "core questions," one question for each of the Priorities.
The Web site uses these nine answers and self- rankings to generate, for each delegate, a ranked listing of "matches" — declared and draft candidates who, according to the "matching algorithm" at AmericansElect.org, most closely share the Priorities of the delegate.
So, one would think that the definitions of the Priorities themselves — for example, the framing of "Reform" that Americans Elect uses for delegates and the framing of "Reform" that it uses for candidates — should, well...match. Yes?
Think again.
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DELEGATES who begin the True Colors process are shown a wheel, like a pie — with each slice representing one of the nine Priorities.
Adjacent to the pie is a set of nine draggable sliders, each slider corresponding to one of the Priorities. As the delegate adjusts all of the sliders to reflect how s/he "ranks" the Priorities, the pie slices fill up with colors to reflect this weighting.
Screenshot from AmericansElect.org (click to read "Reform" pop-up)
Hovering over either the "Reform" slice of the pie or the "Reform" slider reveals the following explanatory pop-up text, which obviously is intended to guide the delegate in deciding how to rank this Priority:
Which is what most people — including Lessig — mean by "reform."
And, as one gets deeper into the True Colors survey, the "Reform" questions do cover these sorts of issues.
But, once a delegate has completed the "Rank Your Priorities" section, the initial "core question" on "Reform" — the one Americans Elect uses to help establish a delegate's candidate "matches" — would seem to have little at all to do with the establishing commonsense framing of "Reform" that is used in the pop-up.
Screenshot from AmericansElect.org (click to read "Reform" question)
Which of the following comes closest to your personal opinion?
A. To make this country great, we should return to the examples and values of our forefathers.
B. This country is already great, we shouldn't change a thing.
C. To make this country great, we should keep building and adapting for the future.
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HERE'S where things start to get complicated.
Go to any candidate profile, and you'll see that the ambiguous "Reform" question and responses above are the same ones that Americans Elect uses to tell delegates and the public (1) what "reform" means to a given candidate and, given that definition, (2) how important "reform" is to the candidate.
Screenshot from AmericansElect.org (click to read "Reform" question)
But the candidates have not framed or answered this question themselves. Nor have they assigned their own ranking to the Priority to which this or any other of the questions and answers are meant to correspond.
Rather, Americans Elect pulls this information from OnTheIssues.org, a Web-based research service that tries to sift the votes and public statements of political figures into a matrix of various ranges of answers to questions.
The "answers" are not the actual answers of these figures. Rather, they are symbolic answers created by the On the Issues service; and these "answers" correspond to equally symbolic keywords and phrases, also developed by the service, to which the service has assigned actual "citations," in the form of a political figure's votes and public statements.
In other words: On the Issues has "plugged in" to its own framework — as represented by its "questions" and "answers" — the on-the-record votes and comments of political figures.
Evidently, Americans Elect has contracted with On the Issues to create, for the candidate profiles that appear at AmericansElect.org, a special "cut" of nine Priorities questions (and corresponding "answers") — based on the existing OnTheIssues.org database — called the "AmericansElect quiz." A "10th question" creates the relative weighting of candidates' "responses" to the first nine. These weightings are the percentages that appear in the Priorities graphic in Americans Elect candidate profiles.
From the explanation of the "AmericansElect quiz" at OnTheIssues.org (emphases mine):
The 10th question is the "weighting" for the first nine quiz questions. We weight the questions based on the relative number of citations for each question. If a candidate talks a lot about a particular issue, we include more citations on that issue; and hence that question gets weighted more....we infer each candidate's relative importance of an issue by how often that candidate talks about the issue....
We use a "framework for analysis" to associate each citation to an answer choice. For each possible quiz answer, we list keywords that we associate with that answer choice. If a politician talks about the issue using the keyword listed below, we assign that answer (assuming the rest of the citation hints at that same answer — keywords might also be used negatively!).
So, in theory, AmericansElect.org could flag someone as a "reform" candidate, simply because that person had spoken in ways that criticized "reform" or that ridiculed "reformers," and had spoken in these ways — a lot — using words and phrases that rang the bell of the On the Issues "framework for analysis."
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BUT HERE'S WHERE the wheels really fall off of Lessig's plan — at least, to the extent that Lessig seems to see AmericansElect.org as a sufficient logistical resource for Americans Elect delegates committed to "reform," as he defines it, to identify, support and vote for an Americans Elect candidate who shares the same commitment.
Bear in mind that it is the Americans Elect corporation that has decided that this question...
Which of the following comes closest to your personal opinion?
coupled with one of these three "answers"...
A. To make this country great, we should return to the examples and values of our forefathers.
B. This country is already great, we shouldn't change a thing.
C. To make this country great, we should keep building and adapting for the future.
are all that any Americans Elect delegate needs to know, in order to:
1 determine both what Candidate X basically means by "reform" and, given that definition, what "priority" that candidate places on "reform"; and to
2 trust that the candidates that Americans Elect "matches" to her, using this information, are indeed reliable matches.
Recall, however, that On the Issues generates a political figure's "answers" by associating his or her specific on-the-record citations — votes, public statements — with one or more keywords and phrases that On the Issues has selected to signify that "answer."
Only by taking stock of all the keywords and phrases that drive the three "answers" to the question on "Reform" can one fully understand how Americans Elect is using the term "reform" on its Web site.
Why this matters: Since Americans Elect uses this same question-and-"answers" combo on "Reform," both in candidate profiles and as the "core question" on "Reform" in the delegate True Colors survey, the meaning of "reform" on which this Q-and-"A" trades features prominently in how Americans Elect uses "reform" to make delegate-candidate "matches" at AmericansElect.org.
So, here, from the "AmericansElect quiz" at OnTheIssues.org — question number 9 — is the "Reform" question and the "answers," together with the corresponding bulleted keywords and phrases that explain what the "answers" really mean.
You won't find this at AmericansElect.org.
Which of the following comes closest to your personal opinion?
A. To make this country great, we should return to the examples and values of our forefathers.
Founding Principles
Citing Founding Fathers
Citing original Constitution
Remove 10th amendment / 14th amendment
"No foreign entanglements" (as a constitutional principle rather than as unilateralism)
Free trade (if an issue of principle rather than a specific trade agreement)
B. This country is already great, we shouldn't change a thing.
Maintain our sovereignty
Support our troops
American first
Love it or leave it
America is unique / light on the hill / an idea / shining city
American exceptionalism
American armed forces second to none
Peace through strength
Increase defense spending
Restrict free trade (if on principle rather than a specific trade agreement)
C. To make this country great, we should keep building and adapting for the future.
No Pax Americana
No American empire
End military adventurism
Don't police the world
America's long-term future
Close all / most U.S. bases abroad
Reduce American armed forces
Decrease defense spending
Free trade benefits both sides (if on principle rather than a specific trade agreement
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THIS DRILL-DOWN is what lies beneath the "Reform" Priority in the online profile of every declared and draft candidate at AmericansElect.org.
Two things stand out. First: An Americans Elect candidate presented as picking "answers" A, B or C still could be presented as a candidate of "reform" — even though these "answers" can be diametrically opposed.
Second: The notion of "reform" that emerges here has to do with U.S. military and defense (and, to a lesser degree, trade) policy as refracted through various competing ideas about war and peace; nation building; and empire.
This obscure framing of "Reform" has nothing to do with the commonsense framing — "government regulation, campaign finance reform, judicial reform, legislative reform, electoral reform" — that Americans Elect uses to invite a delegate to consider how to rank "Reform" as a Priority, in the first section of the True Colors survey.
Nor, in guiding a delegate directly from this "Rank Your Priorities" section of the survey to a "core questions" section in which the "Reform" question is wired to the obscure framing, does the interface at AmericansElect.org either (1) alert the delegate to the disconnect or (2) explain the connections between (a) the obscure framing, (b) the echo of the obscure framing in the candidate profiles, (c) the "AmericansElect quiz" at OnTheIssues.org, and (d) the use of both the obscure and the commonsense framing in the Americans Elect delegate-candidate "matching algorithm."
To be clear: On the "Reform" Priority, this "matching algorithm" is wired for failure. The algorithm seeks to make the closest delegate-candidate correlations, using for each a combined index of (1) one's perspective on "Reform" and (2) the level of importance that one attaches to that perspective, relative to one's perspective on eight other Priorities. For candidates, both the "perspective" and the "level" sides of the index are based on the obscure framing of "Reform." But, for the delegate, the "level" side of the index is pegged to the commonsense framing and the "perspective" side to the obscure. Under these conditions, it simply is not possible for the algorithm to generate a reliable delegate-candidate "match" on "Reform."
Most problematic for Lawrence Lessig, this obscure military-defense-trade framing of "Reform" is not, in any way, the notion of reform that Lessig had in mind when he called on citizens to "'occupy' AmericansElect.org," in part, by using the site to identify and "cast [their] ballot[s] only for a candidate who promises reform first."
Lessig's chosen candidate, Buddy Roemer, told Joe Scarborough — twice in a row — that "the issue is reform."
But it's hard to imagine that Lessig has done his due diligence on this. Even Buddy Roemer right now is listed in his profile at AmericansElect.org as having made the "Economy" — not "Reform" — his top Priority.
Screenshot from AmericansElect.org (click to enlarge)
And, as we've seen, even if Roemer was flagged on his profile with the icon showing "Reform" as his "Highest Priority," it wouldn't mean what Lessig means.
The truth is, it's highly unlikely that delegates will be able to "'occupy' AmericansElect.org" for reform.
But, if they wish to try, they won't be able to use the Americans Elect Web site to find out who the true reform candidates are.
* Lessig, in One Way Forward, also promotes Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz as a possible Americans Elect "reform" candidate.
